ABOUT THE ELECTIS VOTING APP

Electeez (electis.app) is an open source semi-decentralized voting platform.

It is using election guard for its voting engine and the Tezos blockchain to store the results in the form of a smart contract pointing to an IPFS link with all the details to re-run an encrypted tally.

Electeez can be used for low-stakes elections when the organizer hosting the server can be trusted.

Electis.app is built to be as easy to use as possible for anyone to participate or organize elections. It also allows technical auditors to verify as many pieces of information as possible (e.g re-running the tally etc...)

The elections are organized by a Guardian (Multi guardians on our roadmap) A guardian is in charge of keeping the private encryption key(s) of the elections used to encrypt the ballots.

Individual Ballots are always encrypted and their tallying is done via an homomorphic encryption (only the sum of the ballots is decrypted) At the end of the election all the encrypted ballots and the technical paramters of the elections are shared under a zipped artifacts file.

This allow a voter for example to verify that his/her ballot is present and also that its hash (sha1) is the same as the information shared at the end of their vote.

This project is developed by electis in partnership with Tezos via its foundation #MORE INFO you can find more information about electis and electeez on https://www.electis.io/about you can test an online version of electeez on https://www.electis.app

MORE INFO

you can find more information about electis and electeez on https://www.electis.io/about you can test an online version of electeez on https://www.electis.app

INSTALLATION ON UBUNTU

This readme and scripts are desinged for an Ubunutu install on localhost please adapt if you are using another distro.

UPDATE / UPGRADE SYSTEM

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

INSTALL / ELECTEEZ (ELECTIS.APP)

git clone https://gitlab.com/electisNGO/electeez.git
cd electeez

INSTALL PYTHON (IDEALLY >=3.9)

sudo apt install python3.9-dev
sudo apt install python3.9-venv
python3.9 -m venv my_env

LAUNCH VENV

source ./my_env/bin/activate
python -V #SHOULD BE 3.9+

INSTALL / RUN POSTGRESQL

sudo apt-get install postgresql
sudo systemctl start postgresql

INITIALIZE POSTGRESQL

sudo passwd postgres
su - postgres
createdb electeez
createuser <your_user_id>
exit

INSTALL / RUN MEMCACHED

sudo apt install memcached
systemctl enable memcached
systemctl start memcached

INSTALL IPFS

Follow IPFS install procedure on https://docs.ipfs.io/install/command-line/#official-distributions

Once ipfs is installed:

ipfs init #relaunch if queue error

INSTALL LIBS / PYTHON MODULES

make install

INITIALIZE THE DB FOR ELECTEEZ

make data

LAUNCH DJANGO SERVER

make runserver

CREATE A USER

Go to 127.0.0.1:8000 then Sign up with <your_user_email> and check the logs for the email link. (cf the optional steps bellow if you whish to locate the emails logs in files instead of the console). Once your account is activated and you logged in stop the server and follow the next steps

HOW TO MAKE A USER ADMIN

./manage.py shell_plus

u = User.objects.get(email="<your_user_email>")
u.is_superuser = True
u.is_staff = True
u.is_active = True
u.save()
quit()

LAUNCH ELECTIS APP

make run #TO LAUNCH ALL NEEDED SERVERS

ACTIVATE YOUR TEZOS BLOCKCHAIN(S)

Go to the blockchain admin panel

127.0.0.1:8000/admin/djtezos/blockchain/

you will see a list of pre configured Tezos blockchains set as active, you can deactivate the one you don't need and then click save.

ADD NEW TEZOS BLOKCHAIN(S)

For example an Edo2net blockchain

Click on Add a blockchain
Name: Testnet Edonet
EndPoint: https://rpc.tzkt.io/edo2net/
Explorer: https://edo2net.tzkt.io/{}/storage #{} is later replaced by the contract @
Provider Class: Tezos
Confirmation Blocks: 2
Hit Save

Special case, add a fake blockchain for local test

Click on Add a blockchain
Name: Fake
EndPoint: 127.0.0.1:1337 (you can put any adress here)
Explorer:
Provider Class: Test
Confirmation Blocks: 0
Hit Save

When done you will see the list of active blockchain(s) under localhost:8000/en/tezos/'ELECTION_ID'/create/ URL

Notice that a wallet address is created every time you add a new blockchain, you need to send the needed fund to the corresponding blockchain you are planning to use for your elections before launching one. We recommend at least 2XTZ. You can use the faucet bot on telegram to feed your Testnet wallets https://t.me/tezos_faucet_bot

(OPTIONAL) CHANGE EMAIL LOGS LOCATION

When you signup, or do any action supposed to send an email, they will be written in the console which you made make run in by default and which can be busy. If you want to get emails written in a file you must change the email backend to filebased by changing the lines electeez_common/settings.py:

245     EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.console.EmailBackend'
246     # EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.filebased.EmailBackend'
247     # EMAIL_FILE_PATH = '/tmp/app-messages' # change this to a proper location

to:

245     # EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.console.EmailBackend'
246     EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.filebased.EmailBackend'
247     EMAIL_FILE_PATH = '/tmp/app-messages' # change this to a proper location

And choose the location you want for EMAIL_FILE_PATH be sure to mkdir the path before launching it (e.g. : mkdir /tmp/app-messages)